When my son turned nine two years ago, I remember being incredulous that he was halfway to adulthood at that point. This morning, when my daughter got up early to announce she didn’t want to miss a minute of her ninth birthday, I realized that I have been thinking she’s halfway to adulthood since she could form words.

When she began to crawl, we immediately called her The Bullet because of her relentless speed. She is the same way today, bouncing from room to room, from one activity to another, never still for a moment. She is game for anything and her only two settings are 1,000% or fast asleep. There are impromptu daily choreographed dance performances in our family room. There are nightly bedtime rituals with her 12 Beanie Boos, lining them up and often assigning them roles in her next story. There are self-imposed sous chef duties to ensure her favorite foods make their way to the table. In this respect, she is so many things that I never was – self-assured, open-minded, ready for anything. And I love all of this about her, even if the rest of us can barely keep up.

Leading up to her ninth birthday, our conversations can best be summarized by a few key, ongoing exchanges:

Can I have a phone? (No)

Can I have my own YouTube channel? (Definitely no)

Can you change the station to Kidz Bop? (ugggggggh, OK, but can we talk about classic rock or my beloved U2 for just a minute?)

Where is my shirt with the flip sequins? (In the laundry, since you wore it just yesterday)

Can I make more slime? (Yes, but only in the basement, and how are we related?)

Can I host a Slime Camp this summer? <sound of audible blinking>

She is all about sparkles, unicorns and rainbows – so many things that keep her a little girl. And then there is the constant pull with technology, as more and more friends have phones and social media accounts – and she has a mother who is in the firm Team No camp for now on those items. There is also the onset of friend drama, which I can’t even believe some days, and I’m sure will only get much worse in the years to come. I hope she is as kind and inclusive in those situations outside of my reach as she seems when she is home with us.

When not pretending to host a You Tube channel, she is always planning. For today, for tomorrow, for summer sleepovers, for dinners we should prepare and slimes she should make, for next year’s first day of school outfit, for December’s Christmas list, for decorating her own bedroom when we (finally) separate her and her older brother, for family vacations she thinks we should take when her younger brother is old enough. It’s like living with some hybrid of a cruise director, project manager and fashion blogger all at once.

She wants to know everything, do everything. She has endless questions but also likes to provide answers. She has *almost* resigned herself to not getting a younger sister (sorry, but no), and sways between relishing and eye-rolling about her destiny as the only female child in this family.

She is simultaneously the easiest child on earth and incredibly challenging, both because of her fierce independence. My wish is to never, ever slow her down, while also providing her with some yield signs along the way. The truth is that, most days, she teaches me far more than she could ever know.

Her heart is boundless and fiercely loyal. I cannot wait to see what she will do in the world, because I’ve known for nine years now that it’s hers for the taking.

There are two camps of parents: Those who love the baby phase, and those who don’t. I am a card-carrying member of Camp Baby, and always have been. Oh, but they’re better when they’re older and they can interact. They are so much easier when they aren’t so small. Yeah, I know. I’ve heard the […]

At some point in my 20s, I became fixated on pugs. I was single, living in Manhattan, and working about a million hours a week. I had no business getting a dog. But on a spring day in 2003, I went to see a litter of pugs that had just been born. Of the eight dogs who […]

I’m here tonight to accept my award for Best Slacker in a Blogging Role. I’d like to start by thanking space and time for conspiring against me to write at even minimal intervals at this point. It really takes special forces to make me stop doing one of the few things I’m okay-ish at. I’d also like […]

Let me just dust off the tumbleweeds here for a minute and prepare my monitor for the shock of some actual words being typed on my blog. It has been a while. So, I’m up against my annual oh-hey-look-it’s-November-and-suddenly-I’m-way-behind-on-holiday-prep realization. My 412 mental browser windows opened simultaneously, like they can only for the person who […]

When my daughter presented me with a wish list for her birthday, my first reaction was to be taken aback. Way aback. Some things jumped right out at me. A pool — with hot tub. What? A fairy godmother. Um. Not being GF (gluten free). Ouch, my heart. A cat. I don’t even understand this […]

I have long held the belief that the concept of the terrible twos is a complete and total scam that serves to brace us for the insanity that follows: THREE. Three has been a tough year around here and, last night, we said farewell to it for the last time. Today, my youngest is four. […]

Ah, parental advice. We’ve given it, we’ve received it, we’ve fucked it right up on both ends. Am I right? I have been distinctly far less prolific on my blog over the last few months than I had hoped to be. And so, when my friend and self-publishing queen Jen Mann sent out a call […]

I do not plant or garden anything. It’s not in my wheelhouse to grow and cultivate life from the ground to bloomed fruition. I’ll admit, in the last few years, right around this time, I sometimes feel regret for not having tried to harvest a modest vegetable garden where my daughter and I could go […]

A decade ago, I was rooting against science. Not for any dire reasons. But when you are seven days overdue with your first child and your doctor estimates that said child weighs more than nine pounds, you kind of want her to be wrong. Because you’ve never given birth but you’ve heard and read allllll about it — and don’t physics just […]

I'm Kim -- a suburban mom fueled by a little snark, a lot of caffeine (this is often code for wine), a healthy fear of craft stores and years of pent-up Manhattan road rage. Armed with a keyboard and an addiction to storytelling. Welcome to my tiny corner of the Internet. Read more...